Ava Tribušon Ovsenik - Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!

In her new series of paintings, Ava Tribušon Ovsenik interprets the phenomenon of crowds – groups of people – and the field of associations they evoke: the paradox of individualism among the masses, the terror of the hive-mind versus a sense of togetherness, an event as a connective tissue of the community or a consumer product.

Tribušon Ovsenik finds inspiration in impressions from the road, in images from her personal archive, composed into grinding masses that slowly encroach on and occupy the pictorial space.

In the artist's oeuvre, the interest in crowds stems from a painting made following an invitation from the British Parliament to the students of the Royal College of Art upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II. In the days leading up to the funeral, Tribušon Ovsenik, then a student at the RCA, had the opportunity to witness the final tribute to the Queen by members of the public near Westminster Abbey.

The result is a painting that does not adhere to the tradition of depicting state funerals in a manner akin to the painting The Lying-in-State of Winston Churchill (1965) by Alfred Egerton Cooper in the collection of the British Parliament. Rather it responds to the collective, almost euphoric atmosphere surrounding the event. The paintings in the exhibition at UGM Kabinet are, in terms of form and content, a continuation of the artist's exploration of crowds.

“I enjoy following the crowds as part of my research – there is something deeply satisfying in gravitating towards the obvious but with a seemingly higher purpose. The way I see it, crowds allow me to better understand people’s need for a sense of presence, magnitude, relevance – and at the same time, fulfil that need for myself. At the same time, I am glad to have working material that can be found practically at every turn – attending one crowded event can be enough for a year of work ahead.

My feeling of relief in observation is the most striking where the crowd's density is the greatest. That's when I feel it holding the most meaning. An open crowd seeks to grow as soon as it forms, it’s primarily driven by expansion – unconstrained by any set size or space, it grows freely and indefinitely, needing only more men to keep expanding.

In this unstructured state and ongoing dispersion, every crowd radiates a unique rhythmic energy, which I try to grasp in my painting. The openness that allows growth also threatens disintegration. A crowd fears falling apart and tries to delay this by expanding rapidly and this very process ensures its eventual collapse. The ambivalence of this phenomenon is what sustains my interest in painting it.

Only the crowd's expansion keeps individuals from retreating into their private burdens and rejects a no-longer-recognized hierarchy. It forms a very one-of-a-kind temporary infrastructure.

The title of the exhibition Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night! is a phrase borrowed from the film The Truman Show (1998), touching familiar topics of constructed appearances and the tragicomical discrepancy between these hermetic environments, that form our reality. The phrase also indicates a certain repetitiveness, that I find to be commonplace in these spaces, which instils comfort as much as it does despair.”

— Ava Tribušon Ovsenik